The Minstrel Boy
by Bar Sira
Summary: In which a new villain is introduced into Gotham City's collective consciousness. Happy St. Patrick's Day, everybody.


Disclaimer: All things recognizably Batman are the property of DC Comics.

* * *

The crime wave that would introduce a new face to the GCPD's Ten Most Wanted list, drive Batman to distraction for the better part of a month, and ultimately break the heart of Gotham City's foremost information broker began in a small corner drugstore on the third of May. It was about six o'clock in the evening, and the last few customers were just beginning to head to the check-out line, when the intercom crackled to life and a male voice with a pronounced Irish accent was heard throughout the store.

"Good evening to ye, lads and lasses," it said. "Please don't be getting alarmed. Old Maggie and I are only wanting to play ye a slight and soothing melody, so as to be easing ye of your load of cares."

There was a pause after this enigmatic declaration, then a slight scuffling sound as of wood against fabric, and then the golden tunes of an obviously finely-crafted violin rolled out from the ceiling speakers, and the voice began to sing softly:

__

Over in Killarney,  
Many years ago,  
My mother sang a song to me  
In tones so sweet and low –  
Just a simple little ditty  
In her good old Irish way –  
And I'd give the world if she could sing  
That song to me today.

Now, under ordinary circumstances, the knowledge that a mysterious Irishman had gotten control of a drugstore intercom, and was broadcasting lullabies over it for reasons of his own, would have inspired the customers, or at least the proprietor, of this drugstore to take some sort of action, and, in a city with such a prominent criminal population as Gotham, one might reasonably have expected it to start a riot. (It was, in fact, this very observation that, some months later, would inspire Jenna Daugherty, a.k.a. Maple Street, to arrange harmless but alarming occurrences, scurry across town, and rob convenience stores while the GCPD was dispatched to deal with the menace of blue traffic lights.) On this occasion, however, nobody in the drugstore made the slightest motion to investigate, or call the police, or make any other steps to get to the bottom of the matter. In fact, for reasons that at the time were unclear even to them, most of the people in the drugstore stopped moving entirely: the customers stopped wandering the aisles, the pharmacist stopped writing out prescriptions, the cashiers stopped checking out products, and a weird stillness fell over the whole establishment.

__

It was toora-loora-loora,  
Toora-loora-ly,  
Toora-loora-loora,  
Hush, now don't you cry...

It was a six-year-old boy in Aisle 8 who fell asleep first. His mother, who had been looking for toothpaste, felt his hand slide out of hers, and, when she looked down, he was sprawled out on the cold, tiled floor, snoring like a lumberyard.

Before his mother could process that her son could rarely be persuaded to fall asleep this readily even at a quarter to midnight, that he had been completely alert not thirty seconds ago, and that in general there was something rather sinister going on here, the god Hypnos claimed her as well, and she slumped, unconscious, onto the floor next to him.

__

Toora-loora-loora,  
Toora-loora-ly...

One by one, the residents of the Bouren Family Drugstore dropped into dreamless oblivion. Even the cashier with half a pint of caffeine in her bloodstream and the old man comparing insomnia remedies in Aisle 5 were lulled into the kingdom of Somnus by the bewitching strains of the mysterious violin.

__

Toora-loora-loora:  
That's an Irish lullaby.

As the final customer (a young black man who was well known locally for his resistance to hypnotism) finally sank to the ground, the door to the manager's office opened, and a most curious individual stepped out.

He was noticeably short, but not, like a certain associate of his, unusually so: 5'9", perhaps. He was also noticeably thin; his legs and arms gave the impression of consisting principally of knees and elbows, and his clothing (a pair of brown trousers and a green flannel shirt beneath a brown-and-green heather-mixture cloth jacket) sagged on his body in a manner reminiscent of the Scarecrow. He had keen, blue eyes, a long, pointed nose, and a mat of red, tangled hair that stuck out at odd angles from beneath his cap, which was made from the same sort of cloth as his coat, and which, if one looked at it closely, seemed to cling rather more tightly than natural to the back of his head.

In his right hand, he carried a violin – clearly an old violin, but one that nonetheless retained a strange, fascinating beauty. Its strings, like the ribbon of its bow, gleamed in the fluorescent lighting of the drugstore with a queer and almost eerie luminescence.

He walked about the drugstore with a peculiar, skipping, dancing gait, almost like a hobgoblin. One by one, he examined the clients and employees of the drugstore, assured himself that they no longer resided in the land of the waking, and then removed an assortment of valuable items from their pockets, purses, and wrists. Some of these he slipped into his own pockets, or onto his own wrist; others he hid in the lining of his jacket and cap, taking care, as he handled the latter item, not to damage the small strip of wires and electrodes attached to its rim at the back.

For good measure, he also popped open the several cash registers and relieved them of as much of their contents as he could reasonably carry. Then he strolled in the direction of the automatic doors, pausing only when he reached the outside pavement to turn and tip his cap to the storeful of prone figures.

"A good evening indeed," he said, "and bonnie slumbers to the lot of ye."

Then, as the doors slid shut, he shouldered his violin and skipped into the evening dusk.


End file.
